The Child and Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse (CAPVA)

What does this project involve?

The Child and Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse (CAPVA) programme is a parenting intervention that supports families where children aged 9 to 17 are showing violence towards their parents or carers. Families receive up to 20 sessions delivered by trained practitioners. The programme is centred on non-violent resistance, which is intended to help parents and carers respond to violent and abusive behaviour. Where appropriate, practitioners also work directly with children using trauma-informed approaches, cognitive behavioural therapy techniques and mindfulness. The programme is delivered by RISE Mutual CIC. 

Why did we fund this evaluation?

There is limited robust evidence about what works to reduce child-to-parent violence and abuse. We therefore commissioned a (non-randomised) feasibility and pilot study of the CAPVA programme. This identified promising levels of demand and concluded that the programme had the potential to progress to a large-scale randomised controlled trial (RCT). As a result, the YEF commissioned an efficacy trial to test whether the CAPVA programme reduced violence and abuse towards parents and carers. 

What happened to the evaluation?

The trial aimed to recruit 376 families, but mobilisation and recruitment took substantially longer than expected. By August 2025, 41 families had been referred and 18 had consented to participate. Recruitment was too slow for the study to reach the sample required to reliably assess CAPVA’s efficacy within the commissioned timeframe, and the YEF terminated the trial in September 2025.  

As a result, this evaluation cannot tell us whether the CAPVA programme is effective at reducing child-to-parent violence and abuse. Instead, the study focused on learning from the challenges experienced and identifying options for future research. 

What did we learn?

A key lesson is the importance of investing sufficient time and resource in mobilisation, engagement and communication when conducting trials involving local authority services. This includes involving local authorities from the design stage, engaging senior leaders and frontline practitioners, clearly communicating what participation and randomisation involve and ensuring that regular communication is maintained with families and practitioners, responding to concerns on an ongoing basis, adapting where feasible.  

Options for future research include: 

• Retaining an individually randomised controlled trial, with stronger mobilisation and engagement.  
• Randomising at the level of teams, services or local authorities.  
• Considering a stepped-wedge trial in which participating areas are randomly assigned to start delivering the programme at different times, so that all eventually receive it.  
• Considering a quasi-experimental design if randomisation proves infeasible.  

The experience of this study does not mean that an RCT of the CAPVA programme is not viable. If further impact evaluation is considered, the learning from this study should inform both the choice of evaluation design and how local authorities and practitioners are engaged and supported to participate. 

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